This talk presents an unconventional look at the creation of a deadly barrier between East and West Germany.  It reveals how the Iron Curtain was not simply imposed by communism, but had been emerging haphazardly in both East and West long before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.  From the end of the Third Reich, ad hoc enforcement of the tenuous border between the two Germanys led to the creation of difference where there was no difference, institutionalization of violence among neighbors, popular participation in a system that was deeply unpopular--and people normalizing a monstrosity in their midst.

Edith Sheffer is assistant professor of Modern European History at Stanford. Edith Sheffer came to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008 and joined the History Department faculty in 2010.  She recently completed Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, and was the winner of the 2011 Fraenkel Prize, awarded by the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, London. 

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center (TEC), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the Department of German Studies

Event Summary

Professor Sheffer's presentation includes a social history of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. She examines the process by which culturally homogenous populations internalized ideas of difference, and erected arbitrary physical and mental borders accordingly. She argues that the Iron Curtain was a "wall of the mind" reinforced not only by Communist authorities but by the everyday actions of ordinary Germans. 

Professor Sheffer first outlines her recent book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain. Drawing on archives, news stories, and personal interviews with people from East and West Germany, she argues that the Berlin Wall was simply a visible manifestation of an existing rift within the country that had been building for 16 years.  She examines the process of institutionalization of difference, by which people living in a once-cohesive community with no stark religious or cultural differences began to view those on the opposite side of an arbitrary border as "other." Professor Sheffer offers several explanations for why Germans largely accepted the divide, including the gradual internalization by individual citizens, on both sides of the wall, of what Sheffer describes as "the living wall" and a "wall in the head formed by a wall on the ground."  The fact that the wall was a structural response to a social set of conflicts can explain why it both went up and came down so quickly, as the result of many small steps and individual actions.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), The Europe Center and the German Studies department

About the topic:  This talk presents an unconventional look at the creation of a deadly barrier between East and West Germany.  It reveals how the Iron Curtain was not simply imposed by communism, but had been emerging haphazardly in both East and West long before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.  From the end of the Third Reich, ad hoc enforcement of the tenuous border between the two Germanys led to the creation of difference where there was no difference, institutionalization of violence among neighbors, popular participation in a system that was deeply unpopular--and people normalizing a monstrosity in their midst.

About the Speaker: Edith Sheffer is assistant professor of Modern European History at Stanford. Edith Sheffer came to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008 and joined the History Department faculty in 2010.  She recently completed Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, and was the winner of the 2011 Fraenkel Prize, awarded by the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, London. 

Her future research will also examine the intersection of public events and private choices, from Germans’ “zero Hour” diaries in 1945 to the development and dissemination of corporate cultures.  Research and teaching interests span modern Europe and Germany, especially the social and cultural history of the twentieth century.

Speaker Bio:

John Prendergast is an author and human rights activist who for over 25 years has worked for peace in Africa. He is Co-Founder of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Clinton administration, Prendergast was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and Special Advisor to Susan Rice at the Department of State. Prendergast has also worked for two members of Congress, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has also been a youth counselor, a basketball coach and a Big Brother for over 25 years.

He has authored ten books on Africa, including Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year that he co-authored with actor Don Cheadle. His most current book, The Enough Moment, also co-authored with Mr. Cheadle and released on September 7, 2010, focuses on building a popular movement against genocide and other human rights crimes. His other forthcoming book draws on his many years in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.

Prendergast has worked with a number of television shows to raise awareness about human rights issues in Africa. He has appeared in four episodes of “60 Minutes,” for which the team won an Emmy Award, and has consulted on two episodes of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” one focusing on the recruitment of child soldiers and the other on rape as a war strategy. He has also traveled to Africa with ABC’s Nightline, PBS’ The Lehrer NewsHour, and CNN’s Inside Africa.

He has appeared in several documentaries including: "Sand and Sorrow," "Darfur Now," "3 Points," and "War Child." He also co-produced "Journey into Sunset," about Northern Uganda, and partnered with Downtown Records and Mercer Street Records to create the compilation album “Raise Hope for Congo,” which shines a spotlight on sexual violence against women and girls in the Congo.

With Tracy McGrady and other NBA stars, John co-founded the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program to fund schools in Darfurian refugee camps and create partnerships with schools in the United States. He also helped create the Raise Hope for Congo Campaign, highlighting the issue of conflict minerals that fuel the war in Congo. John is a board member and serves as Strategic Advisor to Not On Our Watch, the organization founded by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Brad Pitt.

Prendergast’s op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The International Herald Tribune, and he has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Men's Vogue, Time, Entertainment Weekly, GQ Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Capitol File, Arrive Magazine, Interview Magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Kenneth Cole’s Awearness.

Prendergast has been a visiting professor at the University of San Diego, Eckerd College, St. Mary’s College, the University of Maryland, and the American University in Cairo, and will be at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh. He has been awarded six honorary doctorates.

This seminar explores whether and to what extent the relative circumstances of men and women following marital dissolution affect sex selection behavior within marriages. China's new divorce law, which was enacted in 2001, reduced divorce costs, especially for women, by granting the right to divorce and claim damages in the case of domestic violence and extra-marital relationships and by securing women's property rights upon divorce. Ang Sun has modeled the legal change as a decrease in women's divorce costs in a household in which all the marital surplus accrues to the husband. Sun shows: (1) that the new divorce law predicts an increase in divorce rates after the birth of a daughter; (2) that the new law results in fewer sex-selective abortions for the second birth if the first birth produced a daughter; and (3) that the effect of the new law on the sex ratio should have diminishing returns to divorce cost reduction for women. All the predictions are supported by the empirical evidence. Most importantly, she finds that most of the decline occurred in historically high divorce-cost regions, which is consistent with the predictions of the model and helps rule out concomitant changes in household income and relative returns to male and female children.

Ang Sun received her PhD from Brown University’s Department of Economics. Sun’s research interests encompass development economics, labor and demographic economics, and health economics. She focuses on intra-household allocations, gender differences, and household formation. In particular, she studies how a combination of different forces in China—including traditional values, rapid growth, and the population structure—is affecting Chinese families.